


Dig

by Frangipanidownunder



Category: The X-Files
Genre: F/M, five headcanon au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-29
Updated: 2019-09-29
Packaged: 2020-11-01 08:44:44
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,258
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20812322
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Frangipanidownunder/pseuds/Frangipanidownunder
Summary: Archaeologist AU





	Dig

1

He wasn’t going to go, but Phoebe insisted on putting his name down as a volunteer over the summer. Besides, it was preferable to going home.

“Imagine holding the femur of a 1500-year-old man in your hand,” she’d said as she stroked his cock and he felt himself harden despite himself.

Perhaps he should be going home.

And, then, she’d taken off at midnight, leaving him a scrawled note about ‘having to do some research’ she’d meet at the dig. She signed it with a love heart stabbed with an arrow

He drove to the site where some renowned archaeologist whose name escaped him was conducting works to excavate an Iron Age hill fort.

There were a dozen mud-splashed cars parked in the small clearing at the side of the narrow road. His stomach roiled at the thought of having to spend time with so many new people but it was probably better than having to wait for Phoebe to return from her ‘cat-feeding’.

2

A Land Rover pulled in and parked wonkily next to his car. A pair of women got out, one wearing baggy tie-dyed pants, a woollen midriff sweater revealing a belly-ring and a knitted scarf keeping her red dreadlocks off her face. Her DMs were purple and instantly sunk into the soft earth. The other wore a chambray shirt loose over darker denim jeans, neatly braided hair and work boots.

“I told you we’d be late,” the hippy girl snapped and marched off.

“Your crystals are no match for an up-to-date AA atlas, Missy.” Braids swung a backpack over her shoulder and huffed. She grabbed another bag from the back.

“Can I help?” he offered.

But Braids shook her head and shucked the bag to the crook of her elbow. “I’m fine.” He fell in beside her and she side-eyed him, taking a few more steps before she asked, “Do you know this Professor?”

Phoebe had mentioned the name in passing. Ray something. He wasn’t listening because she was distracting him while he was trying to study. The usual thing. He turned up at hers with all good intentions but she connived some way of getting him to drop everything and go on an errand, or help her with some assignment that was already overdue, or challenged him with some ridiculous dare after one too many Snakebites. He hadn’t worked out how to say no and half of him was more than willing to jump in or experience the thrill of a brush with danger or the law.

“According to my sister, Professor Monica Reyes is the pre-eminent voice in her field. A world expert on burial mounds and tumulus. And a fellow American.” She smiled then and he felt a bloom of camaraderie in his chest. “Missy is treating this dig like she’s going backstage at a Duran Duran concert.”

He chuckled, relaxed. “An archaeological groupie, now that’s a credential.”

3

Missy was chatting with a tall, dark-haired woman, at the entrance to a khaki canvas tent. They blew smoke rings away from each other’s faces and laughed. Beyond, there were pits and ditches, mounds of rubble, wheelbarrows, a couple of small tents, flapping in the breeze. The volunteers were grouped along the edges of the pits, digging or making notes on clipboards. Mulder was impressed by the view. Especially when Braids walked in front of him and he watched her confident strides as she approached her sister. He was also relieved that there was no sign of Phoebe.

“Are you coming?” she called back to him. “I’m not breaking up the love match of the century by myself.”

As he approached, he heard a familiar voice coming from the tent.

“Mon, I think that’s my jacket you’re wearing.” Phoebe emerged from the darkness, holding a similar black leather biker jacket in her arms.

Missy coughed into her hands and stubbed out her cigarette. “Let’s find our team, Danes.”

“Fox, you made it.” Phoebe grinned at him. “Mon, this is my friend, Fox Mulder. He’s being a good egg and helping today. Fox is the smartest person I know.” She held his gaze but linked her arm through Professor Reyes’ elbow. “Aside from you, of course.”

“Clearly, you haven’t met my sister,” Missy said.

Braids blushed. And Mulder felt in good company.

4

His knees creaked, his back ached, his temples throbbed. He hadn’t got used to the humidity in late summer in England. The effects of last night’s alcohol and lack of sleep had caught up with him and he sunk down into the shade of one of the marquees and closed his eyes.

“Water?” Braids handed him a plastic cup and he skulled it. “I’m Dana Scully, by the way,

“I’m Fox ‘World’s Dumbest Smart Person’ Mulder.” He tried to laugh but everything hurt.

Dana sat next to him. “If it’s any consolation, I think Missy is just as humiliated as you. She’s been writing the Professor for months. This dig was going to be the beginning of an enduring romance that would see her travel the world excavating fossils and reconstructing the events of the past.”

“Sorry,” he said. “Phoebe is…” He couldn’t even think of an appropriate descriptor.

“Her chi has taken a hiding.” They both looked at Missy, slumped under a tree, fanning herself with a wad of papers. “And she’ll probably throw out her Tarot deck when we get back. The Queen of Hearts was wrong.”

He dug out a smile. “Isn’t it the High Priestess in Tarot?”

“Whatever it is, I told her not to get her hopes up but she’s always so positive.”

“The Yin to your Yang? The Teller to your Penn?”

That earned him a toothy grin and a giggle. “I’m more logician than magician.”

“So you’re studying mathematics?”

“Physics, actually. And you? History? Archaeology?”

He shook his head. “Psychology.”

“Oh,” she said, looking over at Phoebe who was draped over Professor Reyes. “And yet you haven’t worked that out?”

5

Missy insisted they go for a drink. The thatched pub had a shady garden and served a good Ploughman’s. He ordered a pint of Old Peculiar and savoured the bitter sweetness as it coated his throat. Gnats buzzed in the steamy final hour of daylight.

“She’s not what I expected,” Missy sighed, then sat upright, twirling the thin leather bracelet around her wrist. “But that just means I need to spend more time understanding my own path.”

“Missy,” Dana said. “Your own path is as complicated or as easy as you make it. Destiny just makes people less accountable. Isn’t that right, Fox?”

“Mulder, please.” Her cheeks were flushed and he wondered if they should call it quits at this round. “You don’t believe in fate, Dana?”

“Scully, please,” she said, shaking her head. “Life isn’t written in the stars.”

“And it’s not written in science journals either. That’s just the mechanics. Life, real life, happens between the equations, sister of mine. I’m going back to the motel. Don’t leave on my behalf. You two should fuck.”

“Missy!” The blush burned deeper. Mulder let out a surprised laugh but there was a tingle in his groin. “Sorry,” Scully said, sipping her cider. “She can be very…”

“Honest?”

“I was going to say crude, but okay.”

He swatted a gnat away. Its whine fading into the distance. “I should probably go too.”

Her hand covered his. “Why?”

Yeah, why?

“Maybe Missy is right? Instead of digging up the past, we should do some living between the equations?”

The future was looking bright.


End file.
